Lee Kun-Hee, 1942–2020, Korean business executive. After graduating from Waseda Univ., Tokyo, he went to work at Samsung, which his father had started (1938) as trading company dealing in food products and expanded into insurance, construction, shipbuilding, and other businesses. Lee transformed the company's small electronics business into one of the world's largest, making it a leading manufacturer of smartphones, flat-panel display televisions, and memory chips, and increased the breadth and quality of Samsung products. He was chairman of the company from 1987 until his death, excluding 2008–10, when he was convicted of tax evasion. He also was convicted of bribery in 1996; he received presidential pardons in both cases.
See A. Michell, Samsung Electronics and the Struggle for Leadership of the Electronics Industry (2010).
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